In 1979, News photographer Randy Eli Grothe captured this shot of Steve as they teamed up on a series about State Highway 16, the longest highway in Texas.

(File Photo - Staff)

Stylist Annette Jensen helped not-so-sure-about-this Steve get a makeover for F!D in April 2001.

(
File Photo
- Evans Caglage)

Over the years, Steve took on countless assignments, performing them all swimmingly.

On Father’s Day 2005, Steve Blow caught a pregame first pitch from son Corey at a Rangers game. Corey survived sudden cardiac death the previous year.

(
File Photo
-
The Associated Press
)

This is the week, 37 years ago, that I started to work at this newspaper. And by pure coincidence, this is the week I will leave it.

Yes, I’m afraid this is my farewell column. And I can hardly believe it myself.

It’s a tad earlier than I intended to retire. But the newspaper offered a nice financial incentive to go. It’s time to make room for more digitally inclined journalists.

It doesn’t seem so long ago that I was a young reporter with a full head of hair, a first child on the way and a big-city newspaper job to start on the day after Labor Day.

Even more clearly, 10 years later, I remember writing my first column for the newspaper. I was most worried about coming up with a second and a third.

That was more than 26 years and 3,000 columns ago. And I still fretted about finding the next one. That’s the part of the job I won’t miss.

When they asked me to try my hand at writing a column, the one promise I made to myself was that I would just be me. No pretense. No phony persona. Nothing said just for effect or on an editor’s orders.

I feel grateful to you and to the newspaper for allowing me that freedom to be myself all these years.

I can honestly say that every word I ever wrote was what I fully believed. At that moment, anyway.

Learning more, hearing your points of view and revising my thinking were major parts — and perks — of the job, too.

As the years have gone by, this has felt less like writing columns and more like having a long, ongoing conversation with friends. And what a privilege.

When my son Corey moved into his first house, he introduced himself to the elderly lady across the street. As soon as she heard his name, she exclaimed, “Come here and let me give you a hug. I helped raise you!”

I loved that. You and I, we did share a lot of stuff, didn’t we? Together, we’ve been through births and deaths and Corey’s near-death. Ali went off to college with the Waco wail and, yeah, I even wrote about that vasectomy.

There was nothing special about my family life, of course. My hope was simply that it reflected yours and drew us a little closer as the human family.

A colleague said to me the other day, “We’ll miss you, but what a ride!” And didn’t she say a mouthful.

I can’t leave with anything but gratitude for a career that let me cover a bit of everything — from hurricanes to history-making space shots to the Halloween costume contest at a nudist resort.

(The winning costume consisted of a single cotton ball and a bit of tape. She was a bunny, you see.)

I indulged my boyhood fascination with flight by hitching a ride in just about every form of aircraft, from hot-air balloons to helicopters, from blimps to a Blue Angels fighter jet.

In the name of column research, I spent the night in a South Dallas flop house and checked into The Mansion for a weekend. I slept better at The Mansion.

I got to call it work when I learned to scuba dive and to skydive. I dragged you along on my Spanish immersion trips to Mexico. But everybody wanted a ride when I borrowed that brand-new Corvette.

For some reason, it was one of my slowest adventures that people mentioned most often to me — my walk to work, all 16 miles of it.

Now it’s time for some new adventures — just not in the newspaper.

Lori and I look forward to a lot of travel. We’ll spend time with the grandkids while they still think we’re fun. And we’ll find good volunteer gigs.

I saw a little plaque one time with a wonderful prayer: “Lord, put your arm on my shoulders — and your hand over my mouth.”

That ought to be called the retired columnist’s prayer. You have heard quite enough from me. I’m going to do my best to listen more and pontificate less from here on out.

But this relationship, this bond that I feel with every reader is something that will stay with me forevermore.

Back in that very first column, I said that first columns are a lot like first kisses — inevitably self-conscious, awkward and not great indicators of things to come.

All these years later, I have come to see that last columns are like farewell hugs — full of deep feeling and hard to let go of.